Warning

Is this the end for Comic Sans?

Comic Sans is widely regarded as being a stain on the font community, but now an Aussie graphic designer has come up with a replacement, to the font described as ""showing up for a black-tie event in a clown costume.”

Aussie graphic designer Craig Rozynski has today announced a modern take on Comic Sans that he's calling 'Comic Neue.'

“Comic Neue aspires to be the casual script choice for everyone including the typographically savvy,” Rozynski writes on comicneue.com, which is offering the font for free download.

"The squashed, wonky, and weird glyphs of Comic Sans have been beaten into shape while maintaining the honesty that made Comic Sans so popular.

"It's perfect as a display face, for marking up comments, and writing passive aggressive office memos."

Comic Neue includes two variants, one with rounded ends and one with slanted ends, and is undisputedly better looking and easier to read than Comic Sans.

The original Comic Sans font was created in just a week by designer Vincent Connare for a Microsoft project in the mid-90s. Connare has said that he was inspired by the bubbly look of comic-book lettering and designed the font using two comics that were lying about his office – The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen – as inspiration.

It since inspired movements like Ban Comic Sans, whose creators say "We call on the common man to rise up in revolt against this evil of typographical ignorance.

"We believe in the gospel message “ban comic sans.” It shall be salvation to all who are literate. By banding together to eradicate this font from the face of the earth we strive to ensure that future generations will be liberated from this epidemic and never suffer this scourge that is the plague of our time.